Free market unregulated and unperturbed by a violent state, free trade, private property, purely voluntary transactions. The way I mean the term is synonymous with anarcho-capitalism.
Discussion
now i have to ask what is anarcho capitalism
The thing I am describing, but at societal scale. Everything is an economic good provided by voluntary exchange on the free market, including defense, arbitration, law, etc. Private property and voluntary exchange is all you need as the building blocks.
https://www.amazon.com/Spontaneous-Order-Capitalist-Stateless-Society-ebook/dp/B012DL2SQ2
hmmm is labor considered a private economic good?
One mixes labor with resources to yield economic goods.
hmmm when we say capitalism is the problem, what we are getting at is the mass wage enslavement of the working/employee class by the capitalists/the employers i.e. those who hoard capital, business owners, the state and the actors that make up its apparatus). selling your labor to a capitalist is not voluntary because if you dont you'll end up on the street. all the state does is maintain a low minimum wage for the capitalists to be able to keep their profits and pay off the politicians, thus keeping our collective liberation from being achieved.
Free markets aren't the problem; States doing things like you're saying are the problem. Its not a free market. Its a State-rigged system that artificially (and violently) props up certain well-connected parties and hurts those who aren't close to the source of violence.
mmmm agree with you there that most of us are def not free. i dont think the state is doing the rigging though. historically capitalists created the current system by rigging it via lobbying and campaign donations...and by enslaving everyone to a paycheck. master => slave, lord ==> serf, employer => employee. hasnt always been that way, dosnt have to be now. we want democratically ran workplaces, not despots profitting off our backs.
Lobbying and campaign donations can't exist without a State. Nobody is enslaved to a paycheck, you can choose to not work if you prefer to have no money. Just the other day a Nostr user was chiding me for not growing all my own food. You could choose the life of a subsistence farmer and not "wage slave" if you want to sacrifice all the luxuries that come with our complex economy.
"Democratically-run" is hardly desirable. That just means 51% get to coerce the other 49% while they call it "fair".
Pure voluntary consent in all things is the only world I'm interested in.
careful nostr:npub19ma2w9dmk3kat0nt0k5dwuqzvmg3va9ezwup0zkakhpwv0vcwvcsg8axkl... I'll roast you again 😂
i just dont agree that nobody is enslaved to a paycheck. people dont have a choice to not go to work when they got kids or a sick parent at home. not being able to afford housing is not a choice. when folks critique capitalism, we are critiquing the fact that we have to sell our labor to a capitalist for wages to sustain ourselves and those we are socially responsible for.
im all for the abolition of the state that maintains class antagonism but its disengenous to let these CEOs off so easily considering the wealth gap has only increased and programs for the people have been dialed back in return for socialism for the capitalists (more capitalism) in the form of tax cuts and other favorable conditions for the mixing of "labor with resources" AKA the accumulation of CAPITAL. wealth has not been this concentrated since the years before the great depression. people are not so free as you are suggesting.
What you are describing is not about capitalism or other systems, it's way more fundamental than that. Youre describing having two conflicting need, scarce resources, and limited time: "spend a week generating resources I save for the future" vs "use saved resources while I care of a sick loved one this week" - whether the former one here is working on your own farm, building your own shack, volunteering at the community center (to "earn" social trust), doing a task for someone else, or going to a factory to get paid for hourly labor.
There's no escaping the fact that one (or a collective) must generate a surplus of energy to store if one wants to be able spend any time NOT merely generating energy 100% of their time. Either that surplus is owned by individuals and they're free to generate it and use it how they see fit, or it's owned by some collective entity. In the latter case, some system for the contribution, distribution and physical protection of the shared savings is required - and there's no way to make those systems in such a way that's fair to all and not liable to capture and prone to violence.
You're not critiquing capitalism, you're upset at the existence of the fundamental mathematics of scarce resources. I agree - it's a bummer that we don't have infinite resources. But we don't. and we have to find the best way to handle that fact in a way that doesn't result in constant conflict.
For what it's worth, technological development driven by the engine of profit-seeking capitalism - stunted though it is by State intervention - is brining about the closest thing we've ever seen to "infinite resources". Quality of life goes up while prices come down. A smartphone from 10 years ago is basically free now while it was mind-blowing when it came out. Strangers can have conversations about capitalism across the globe at light speed without censorship. A relatively "poor" kid by today's standards can start a podcast nearly for free... We should expect this to continue to the limits of physics - IF we let it and don't fuck it up with collectivism. You want your infinite resources and perfect equity? Embrace progress and private property.
I swear I just came across this comic today but boy is it apt for this conversation 
Unfortunately, you can't teach a mind to be free.
our critique of capitalism is the inefficient use of resources (including LABOR), not the lack of infinite resources, which labor isnt. capitalism, the current system of distribution of surplus, has been extremely unbalanced for a long time. hours of labor should be used for the betterment of the community, not the surplus of a single CEO. the quality of life measures you are describing (telecomm infrastructure) are a single bullet point in a long list of quality of life measures by the WHO. in the u.s. more is spent on health care per person than other countries and they have the worst health outcomes. price of health care has gone UP, health outcomes has gone DOWN. CEO profit continues to skyrocket. corporate landlords keep housing out of reach for families, leading to an increase in folk sleeping on the street. wealth has not been this concentrated in the world since the years leading up to the great depression. this is the distribution of surplus energy you defend?
housing and care for the sick and babies are unavoidable fundamental elements of people's lives that are commodified and left to the market under capitalism. if capitalism wasnt demanding that we spend more time away from our families than in the home with them? would places like the u.s. have as many single parent households as they do right now? would there be a need to institutionalize the elderly or developmentally disabled in homes if capitalism didnt demand an army of wage slaves spend the majority of their limited time in existence physically building a fortune for the CEOs? its inhumane to boil human beings down to hours of wage slave labor for the CEO's profits and disengenuous to use words like liberty to justify it as if people have a choice to participate in the labor or not.
because the image you shared doesnt touch on any of this, it wont help any critic of capitalism understand why capitalism is not the problem in society today. capitalism and its agents, pure or crony, seek to build a profit off the backs of others just like the plantation owners.
You're saying "should be" a lot. What do you mean by that? Who are you seeking to enforce that upon and by what right can you enforce it? What if someone disagrees? Gulag?
i said "should" once. I'm echo-ing what organized labor is demanding from those that exploit the fact that under capitalism they need to sell an increasing amount of hours of their livelihoods to the capitalists for wages to then be able to pay other capitalists for basic needs like housing, food, and healthcare. gulag?? please the u.s. imprisons the most humans out of any other state actor for not falling in line with the private property or capital order doctrines. u.s. prison labor for the u.s. corporations. diverting attention from the content of what I am saying so you don't have to confront the ideas.
You keep pointing to the State as the source of the problems (and the protector of entrenched/lobbying interests, and the imprisoner). I agree with you there.
Organized labor can demand whatever they want. And if their demand aren't met, they're free to go elsewhere (or be forced to when their employer chooses to fire them rather than cave, and hire labor who doesn't make demands they don't wish to meet). Where is the problem there? When people can't agree, they must part ways. How else could a disagreement be resolved other than violence? This is good. That's a voluntary situation you're describing.
I envy your energy... I'm done.
you should read anatomy of the state by Murray rothbard.
no one enslaves you to a paycheck but the state. they create the barrier to entry and create the laws that prevent free and open commerce.
it's why you need a banrers licence to cut hair or catering license to sell un pernil y arroz con gondules... because you can't do basic business transactions you have to trade your labor and lose your ability to fully participate in the market.
That's not because of a capitalist... that's because of a corrupt public servant using the force of the state and putting you in line.
anarchocapitalist libertarian types like rothbard seek to maintain the individual liberty to accumulate capital off the backs of their employees that labor for them. and not every state is like the united states, an oligarchy carefully crafted to shield capitalists from any accountability for their individual profit motives AKA socialism for the capitalists. its a state born from european colonization, the mass enslavement and purging of non whites, expropriation of indigenous lands, and imperial domination. where is the justice for all those who had their individual liberties trampled upon by the capitalists in the name of a profit motive? those who critique capitalism are critiquing the master slave relationship between those with accumulation of capital and those without.
the state is also not the only licensing entity for professions. i.e. cisco, bar association, etc. another example of corporations empowered by the state to create optimal market conditions for their machine to continue to accumulate capital of the backs of laborers. licensing systems are just as much about who they are trying to keep out of professions as much as they are about getting people into them.
Perfect example. If there was competition among licensing agencies in a truly free market, then those who operate more ethically and fairly could compete and succeed. But instead the State will imprison you or some company will attack you legally (with the backing of the State's laws you never asked for) if you try to create or merely patronize an alternate licensing agency that doesn't have state blessing.
In a free market, an individual discriminated against by one licensing agency would be free to use another or create one of his own. THAT is justice. What are you proposing that is more just than that? A different coercive, violent entity "but wait a good one"? What's the alternative you favor as more just and fair?
This argument is old and stale. Capitalism has it's faults but there is no alternative that has yielded better results.
You can attack capitalism and the "anarcho-capitalisy types", but what you can't do is come up with a viable alternative with a track record of success.
Your ideas are not new. They are Marxist and Marxism has always created the absolute most corrupt governments in the world with a 2 class system. Indeed, a 2 class system is the heart of Marxism and it always ends with impoverished masses.
If you don't like rothbard, the try skousen. He's written two books that are relevant to this conversation. The Naked Communist, and the Naked Capitalist.
Socialists love monopolies because they can lift up champions under the guide of capitalism and continue to espouse more government as the solution. It's always the state that created the unfair advantage in the industry, and then seeks to regulate. Ayn Rand is another author that speaks on this extensively.
The state is always the enemy of the people. they have a monopoly on force. It's their only tool and the state will always choose a controllable champion to prop up in order to control an industry.
Many of them things you are saying are true. But only partially so because you can see the puppet, but fail to see the strings.
There is no liberty without economic freedom. Economic Freedom, or the freedom to transact at will, is your natural state. The state can not give you that, but they can certainly take it away and replace it with an illusion. That illusion, still traps your mind.
both of yall and the creator of the image above are skating past the questions of labor as private property aka wage slavery and wealth concentration. im just letting yall know that those who critique capitalism are not talking about anything on that list but instead concerned with the fact that labor, housing, health, and policy are commodified under capitalism to create terrible conditions for youth and families to thrive as well as a massive wealth gap between those at the top and us. only a state forged by the CEOs maintains that contradiction.
marxist economics emerged as a critique to the 2 class caste system (the class that hoards capital via the commodification of labor and policy and the working class AKA the haves and the have nots). by regurgitating conservative talking points about what marxism is or isnt and putting me in a category of not being able to think outside of the "shell" of capitalism, you're displaying an inability to engage in a rigorous debate about models of production in society. only when structural incentives change in these production models will the state dissolve and the world move beyond capitalism / socialism to something better. economic freedom should not be reserved only for the capitalists. the laborers deserve it too. we deserve a choice in selling our labor to a CEO, the epitome of centralized power, or using it to better our communities.
that whole absolutism about there being no alternative to capitalism is also disingenous. global capitalism has been mad unstable in the last couple hundred years. along with periodic recessions caused by the excess surplus in production, it had to be saved by SOCIALISM during the great depression via the new deal as well as the 07 - 08 financial crisis via bank bailouts. within these "cycles" of capitalism lies turmoil and tragedy for the every day family. i know people that know people that killed themselves when they lost everything in 07-08.
the puppet masters are the CEOs who exploit the economic model of production to maintain a hegemony over the world and its institutions. these are the same puppet masters that inspired facist dictators through Latin America, Europe, and southeast Asia over the last century to weaponize the state to maintain a two class caste system (laborer aka exploitee and employer/state aka exploiters) in their coutries and squash all dissent.
Labor is not private property.
ahhh its not?? why don't I own what I produce in the 8 hours of my shift? why does all of that surplus go to a CEO?
can you flesh out a little better what you mean by "mixes" in the context of labor as an economic input of capitalism by the employer/capitalist class? plantation owners also mix their economic goods (land, accumulated wealth, tools aka CAPITAL) with labor (slaves) to yield economic goods like sugar, cotton, etc.
Why don't you own what you produce? Because you signed a voluntary employment contract that states you won't own what is produced. Perhaps you shouldn't have signed it if you didn't want that outcome. You can't be forgiven for renegging on your voluntary agreement.
By "mixes" I meant: if I own an unimproved resource and I improve it by working on it, I've made it more valuable to others and I can trade it with those who want it. And they'll pay a price for the improved product that reflects the work I put in to improve it. If instead of Me working on it, I offered someone else a wage (they agreed to) to improve it, the situation is no different. Except maybe I have to sell it for a little more to account for the wages I paid.
Nobody in that situation has been "enslvaved" - all of those agreements, from wages to final trade, were voluntary.
Just because someone doesn't have access to some imagined better situation doesn't mean they were enslaved against their will (where they "could have had otherwise if not for being forced) into their current reality. I don't have access to a flying car. Is my current car enlsaving me to the ground without my consent? No, it's simply not an option for me to have a flying car. Hopefully my children will have that option, but I don't. Shall I forceably coerce others with the ultimate (unobtainable) goal of providing me with flight? Is that reasonable of me or even in my own best interests?
every employment contract ever signed between a capitalist and an employee whose labor they want to exploit is one signed under duress. its not in the employee's interest to not accept these wages. How else are they going to pay for shelter, food, or health care? if you don't provide a roof over your head, the police will arrest you for sleeping at the park. the affordable care act mandated most us residents to have health care, meaning that the state could come for you if you didnt. if you dont feed your kids, the state will take them from you. at every turn, its forced coercion by the capitalists, who have the means to pay you wages, or the state, who will come for you if you don't.
Take the community of exploitation you're describing and imagine there are a set of stateless, voluntary anarchist societies open to immigration. Some are ancap, some are ancoms, some are something else entirely. These exploited laborers can go to one of those where they suspect they'll fare better.
Do you see a a problem with that?
nope. just like Castro didnt hold anybody hostage in Cuba, anybody and everybody is free to find better for themselves and their communities.
🤝
What if they don't have the means to travel away from Cuba because they were never allowed to accrue wealth? Couldn't that been seen almost similarly to "wage salves" in the sense that "they can go elsewhere if they want!" (But really they don't have options or means to exit because the state system defacto reduces their options)
maybe? a u.s. government corporation (FDIC) currently manipulates the cost of credit to reduce options for their citizens to afford a home for their families. the u.s. state also works with private corporations in keeping criminals out of the work force by prioritizing hiring folks without a record, reducing their options too.. Cuba's particular situation is a cruel blockade by the u.s. that bars them from accessing credit markets and disincentivizes companies from doing business with them or shipping anything into or out of the country easily, so its a capitalist fascist empire state that is ultimately preventing any kind of wealth accumulation from happening in Cuba, not any kind of socialist government suppression of economic development. there are lots of private cooperatively run enterprises in Cuba. a lot of these folks get help from family outside.
until the capitalist state is abolished we will all be wage slaves.
The new deal wasn't a savoir, it was a disaster
it's unbelievable that you would use fascism in Europe and Latin America as an example of capitalism. Both fell to Marxist/collectivist ideals. Latin America was once wealthy until it fell to Marxist revolutions. It's been a corrupt and degenerate space ever since.
You say we are dodging the question, but it isn't capitalism that needs to justify itself. History is on our side. Its collectivism of whatever flavor you want that needs to prove itself. it's never worked. Just slowly eroded the wealth of any nation it's set it's roots in.
By all means offer an example that didn't end in tragedy.... I'll wait.
the centralized, dominating power that your boss/the CEO/the capitalist, has over the laborers in the enterprise for the duration of their shifts mirrors the governments of facist dictators in their weaponization of state power to subvert political processes and maintain this fundamental 2 class caste system. the boss/capitalist literally takes all of the fruits of your labor, sells it at a markup, and breaks you off a crumb (a wage) for an hour of your time. if you speak out against this injustice or try to organize your workplace for better working conditions, capital and the state are there to make sure you stay in line. like the slave asked themselves every day in the morning "do i go in and do the master's bidding, or tell him i need a sick day and risk 50 lashes?" the employee every morning has to ask "do i go in and give this extremely wealthy capitalist with way more favorable life circumstances than me the product of 8+ entire hours of my labor in exchange for a minimum wage, or do i forgo my financial obligations this month and get evicted or lose my kids?" where is the liberty in this economic model of production? wage slavery is not good. more and more people are having to work longer hours to afford the basics for their families. the capitalists ship jobs to poorer nations to exploit their circumstances in the name of minimizing labor costs, further fueling the class divide in those nations. we are not happy with this arrangement and the way its deteriorating our qualities of life. meanwhile the capitalists are as wealthy as they have ever been since the years leading up to the great depression.
the national socialist workers party aka the nazi's were anti-communist af. these facist dictators, are no better examples of "Marxist/collectivist" ideals than the united states "Democratic" party is of "democratic" ideals as they habitually subvert democratic/political processes via the commodification of policy (lobbying of corporate backed interest groups/PACs etc) and the deployment of state power and capital for regime change in the rest of the world, particularly in Latin America/Caribbean nations.
we need to move to more localized models of production that prioritize decentralized control of surplus by the laborers vs centralization of power in a capitalist. whether thats a service that you need to get licensed to be able to provide or a collectively owned public intstruments like the public bank in north dakota, u.s. (which weathered the 07 08 recession admirably). we have businesses cooperatively owned and operated by prisoners in Puerto Rico. there is a coop bakery called Arizmendi in oakland california (look up who Arizmendi was) and a dope coop grocery called Rainbow in san francisco too. many successful examples of cooperatively operated enterprise ran by commies currently exist and have existed throughout the world. they are dwarfed, unfortunately, by the centralized, facist employers (the capitalists and the state who does their bidding) who "employ" the vast majority of the planet and been peeling back worke's' collective gains post WW2 and in the united states are literally coordinating a challenge to the constitutionality of the national labor board right now...is that unbelievable?
this is a critique of capitalism. not reflected in the original image you shared.
no one is saying you need to work. if you don't want to work, then try entrepreneurship.
Learn and participate or don't and complain.
I'm moving on from your complaints. As I said, these arguments are old, stale and the ideology has never produced a productive and profitable society. Communists have almost well over 100 years under their belt.
Karl Marx himself was a spendthrift alcoholic that refused to work. And while he rubbed shoulders with elites that continually supported him, his children died due to hunger and poor living conditions. He was a complainer and a degenerate. Nations that have been sucked into his mental disease morally degrade in a similar fashion until the nation itself becomes a mirror of his life.
Maybe learn how money and finance work 🤷♂️.
Good Luck, Boricua.
for every degenerate communist like Marx theres a piece of shit capitalist "financer" like Epstein that undergird the facade of an american dream by being literally in bed with shitcoiners like SFB, our kids, politicians, and other "pure" capitalists that force their employees into signing a contract under duress because they are the only ones in society that are able to provide sustainance for them in the form of wages to pay for things like a roof over your head. if you cant pay for that, the police will lock you up for sleeping at the park. you also need to pay for food to feed your kids. if you cant pay for that, cps will come for them too. under the affordable care act health insurance was mandated by the state for most, meaning they could come for you for that too. at every turn, corporations and the state that coddles them attack our civil liberties and make our lives suck. people are not happy. can you point to some happiness and hope right now?
resorting to imaginary 100-year communist realities and ad hominem attacks like a bonafide fascist. the era of capitalism is coming to an end. a better era of coopoerative entrepreneurship and economics is coming. this is why bitcoin is revolutionary as fuck.
no mental model will separate the cronies from the system of production that empowers them with so much control over our lives. wealth accumulation in the form of profit will always be hoarded on the backs of laborers that don't have a say over how they can earn a living. whether they work for a state agency or a pure capitalist, a workers time on this planet as a live human being is commodified on a balance sheet for an employer. you are either an employer, or an employee in this society.
You said earlier that employers don't allocate labor capital efficiently, but here you're saying it's on the balance sheet, which implies it is being allocated properly to create the highest value output. How do you square these seemingly conflicting points?
Are they allocating labor inefficiently (and therefore losing on the balance) or are they using it to maximal efficiency (and winning on the balance)?
Or by "efficiently" did you mean - earlier - "not for the common good but rather for their own purposes"? This "efficiently" seems ambiguous and I suspect you mean "they're not being efficient relative to the good of all". Do I have you right?
the only thing being on a balance sheet implies is that you are being coerced into being an ecomonic imput into the profit equation of a capitalist who is in cahoots with the state to make it harder and harder for you to accumulate enough wealth to comfortably raise a communiy. unless its the balance sheet of a commie cooperatively owned and operated enterprise that splits profits justly among the workers and is accountable to its community vs shareholders, its the balance sheet of a facist dictator capitalist who weaponizes the state/court system through minimum wage, right to work, taking out the labor board, police enforcing private property rights, rolling back of social safety nets, etc to maintain control of the game. corporations have a whole separate court system they are tried in just to subvert the will of the masses they exploit. look it up.
united states capitalism and the american dream is a grift and facism/neoliberal economics is capitalism in decline and trying to save the profits for the CEO and maintain u.s. hegemoney. our global system of production doesnt have to be this way. its destroying families and making life for the majority of us in the rest of the Americas and Global South. like george carlin said its the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
All of your critiques of State-backed crony capitalism are basically on point and I agree with all of them.
None of your critiques of purely free markets land for me.
Most of your bolstering of communist-style ideas don't appeal to me, but in a web of anarchist communities (some being capitalist some being communist) the communists would be free to try their experiments (and I support their freedom to do so) and the ancaps would be free to try theirs. Your hypothesis is that the ancaps would fail and the ancoms would succeed. I feel the opposite. Maybe some day we'll get to see who's right.
I think maybe one difference between us (you tell me) is that I wouldnt force the ancoms to be ancaps, while I suspect you would want to force the ancaps to be ancoms. As long as you agree that people should be free to try their own things and stay out of each other's voluntarily communities, we actually have no disagreement whatsoever in practice.
we won't have to force anybody to leave their current situation for something better like the capitalists create a state that forces folk into selling their labor for a wage. after a few months of wage slavery in anarchocapitalist village, a Marcos Xiorro or Nat Turner is gonna lead a rebellion and bring his crew to kick it with the commies where laborers work for OWNERSHIP.
man as long as you don't try to hire me or any of my anarchocommie homies with your "voLunTarY eMpLoYmEnT cOnTrACts" we will aways serve you a cup of cooporately farmed and ethically grown coffee when you visit our commune
Sounds rad, I'm down to visit often. I love good coffee
And if I'm convinced, I'm not opposed to the idea of staying and joining the collective. I just don't suppose that'll happen, but I'm open to being convinced always.
One thing that interests me that I'd like to hear your opinion on: in the "ancap village" it's not like there would be a prohibition on collective ownership. If some coffee farm wanted to operate the way you're describing, it doesn't violate anyone's property rights or coerce anyone, so it would be just fine.
But I'm not sure the opposite is true. In "ancom village" if someone wanted to operate a "wage slave" company that employees chose to work at, I suspect such a thing would be forbidden and forceably stopped.
Am I right about that?
If so, what do you think about the fact that one design allows for the other to operate within it, while the other design forbids its counterpart from existing?
it depends on whether or not you consider labor laws protecting an employee against being enslaved into a wage system by a capitalist an infringment on that capitalist's "private property rights".
which brings us back to my first question, is someone's labor and the product of it considered the private property of a single fascist capitalist that has ultimately supreme authority of that person during their shift? i think i know what trump, bezos, musk, and all the usamerikkkan oligarchs would say. the need for an employee to be efficient with their (most amount of wage for least amount of their time) is at odds with the capitalist need to minimize expenditures that eat away at their profit. how is this tension reconciled in ancap??
which brings up another question...why would someone slave themselves for crumb wages when they could work in their community for ownership/split profits of what they are producing doing whatever it is that makes them feel the most fullfilled? what do they need crumbs for when they have wealth at home in the form of support around things like child care, health, school, and all the other things commodified under capitalism for private ownership to profit off of without having to do any actual physical labor or be accountable to their communities??